Car market leader Maruti Suzuki India Limited unveiled their new compact

B-segment car, A-star, today in the hope that it will revitalise plunging sales figures that fell by 8.3 per cent in October 2008.

Speaking at the launch, Maruti Udyog chairman R C Bhargava said, “There is a great deal of unpredictability about how world economic scenario will play out. Most experts say we have not yet got to the bottom of the economic cycle.”

Maruti’s sales in the first seven months of 2008-09 were 4 per cent higher than a year earlier, but commodity prices had hit profitability. The global credit crunch which has contributed to the slowing of auto sales has left many in the automobile industry who had planned to launch new cars and variant in 2008-09 on edge about the profitability of their new ventures. Many companies have had to scale back their production levels, including market leaders Maruti Udyog which had a routine shutdown of production in its Manesar and Gurgaon plants for four days to make adjustments in supplies. “The next five months, again very difficult to predict, but we do not expect sales and production this year to go below last year’s figure,” said Bhargava.

But while most companies remain worried about adverse economic conditions, Bhargava expects to see the benefits of the recent fall in commodity prices by February 2009 and anticipates that new models Swift and Dzire and A-Star would help the company beat last year’s production and sales volumes. “All the cars which we have launched recently have been very successful. The Swift and Dzire still have waiting lists despite the slowdown, despite the interest rates,” Bhargava said.

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